- 學位論文
社會責任企業之盈餘管理-訊息傳遞或代理問題
Corporate Social Responsibility and Earnings Management: Signalling or Agency Problem
摘要
企業原本就應擔負其所應負之社會責任，但在企業承擔社會責任的背後是否可能存在其它動機呢？過去研究指出，企業可能透過企業社會責任進行盈餘管理而造成代理問題；亦有學者認為盈餘管理是企業為了傳遞訊息以降低資訊不對稱。由於過去研究企業社會責任與盈餘管理之文獻，大多僅以二元變數代理企業社會責任變數，且尚未有文獻檢視企業揭露盈餘數字是否有顯著偏離班佛法則之情形，因此本研究採用有等級次第差異之企業社會責任績效表現取代二元變數，分析企業社會責任與盈餘管理間之關係，且探討在不同企業社會責任績效表現下，企業所揭露之盈餘數字是否偏離班佛分配之情形，以強化本研究之結果並補足文獻的不足。此外本研究更進一步將盈餘管理區分為三種動機：盈餘平穩化、避免盈餘損失或降低與盈餘積極性，以代理理論與訊息傳遞理論為基礎，並探究不同企業社會責任績效表現下企業盈餘管理之動機，是傳遞訊息？或是造成代理問題？抑或是兩者皆有？研究結果顯示：第一，企業之企業社會責任績效的確與盈餘管理程度呈現顯著正相關，且企業社會責任績效表現較佳之企業其盈餘數字有偏離班佛法則之情形，代表企業可能以企業社會責任為工具而進行盈餘管理，；第二，企業社會責任績效表現較佳之企業仍存在有三種盈餘管理之動機，代表企業盈餘管理之動機除了有傳遞訊息之動機外，同時亦會造成代理問題。
並列摘要
Besides the social responsibility enterprises assuming, what other motivations the enterprises have to assume the corporate social responsibility (CSR) secretly? Previous studies point out that enterprises could manage earnings through CSR activities and hence lead the agency problem occur. On the other hand, scholars also indicate that the earnings management(EM) could be a signal in order to decrease the information asymmetry. For the most part of prior researches, they adopt dummy variable to be a proxy of CSR, and there is no research to analyze the earnings announced by enterprises through Benford’s law. According to these, our study uses the CSR performance to instead the dummy to analyze the relation between CSR and earnings management. Furthermore, we also explore the interrelation between CSR and EM by directly examining the digital distribution of the firm-specific earnings with Benford’s law to confirm the information contents of CSR and EM. In addition, our study separates earnings management into three kinds of motivation which are earnings smoothing, earnings aggressiveness, and earnings losses avoidance, and investigates the relation between CSR and the three kinds of earnings management motivation including agency problem causing, signaling or both based on agency theory and signalling theory. Our results show that CSR performance has significant positive relation with earnings management and corporate has all three kinds of motive to manage earnings. These means that managers may manipulate earnings through CSR activities and these earnings management behaviors not only signal transmission but also causing agency problem. Our results find the reason why managers increased the CSR performance to provide the supervisors to make regulations to restrain the earnings manipulation of managers and hence make sure the implementation effect of corporate governance.